Where the Airplane Was Invented — the Wright Brothers' hometown holds the world's largest aviation museum free of charge, the Dayton Peace Accords ended the Bosnian War here in 1995, and the city gave the world the cash register and the pull-top soda can
Dayton, Ohio is a city of 137,000 in southwest Ohio — the birthplace of powered flight, with a stronger claim than Kitty Hawk (where the Wright Brothers only flew their plane, not built or tested it). Orville and Wilbur Wright designed, built, and tested their aircraft in Dayton — their bicycle shop, home, and the Huffman Prairie (where they conducted 105 flights in 1904–1905 after the 1903 Kitty Hawk flight) are all in Dayton. The National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is the world's largest aviation museum — four hangers of aircraft from Wright Fly…
Dayton was established in 1796 at the confluence of the Great Miami, Mad, and Stillwater Rivers — a strategic location that made it a manufacturing centre. The city's inventor culture was extraordinary: besides the Wright Brothers, Dayton gave the world the cash register (James Ritty, 1879), the self-starter automobile ignition (Charles Kettering, 1912), the pull-tab aluminum can (Ermal Fraze, 1959), the traffic light (Garrett Morgan, Cleveland — but perfected and patented in Dayton), and the mechanical corn picker. The 1913 Great Dayton Flood (March 25–26) killed 360 people and caused $147 m…